Cox Communications Truck in Fredericksburg

[dtscho]

There was a Cox Communications truck parked in Fredericksburg the other day. I noticed there were several antennas on top, so I asked the driver what they were using for communications nowadays. He said those antennas are used to check for cable system "leakage." I didn't ask if they still use two-way radios.

Dave

 

[RFI-EMI-GUY]

There is a signal always present on the cable around 75 MHz if I recall. Normally it cannot be heard by a truck driving by. If it is, the driver is alerted to either a bad outside cable or bad wiring in a home.

 

[Daleb49]

Leakage meaning looking for people stealing cable.

 

[K6CDO]

Leakage meaning looking for people stealing cable.

More often leakage from bad connections or damaged cable in the overhead plant.

 

[RFI-EMI-GUY]

Leakage meaning looking for people stealing cable.

Maybe, but sometimes bad splices in the house.

My neighbor behind me had bad connections in the attic and ingress from external signals affected my internet. It was weird because I called in my trouble call and hours later she calls my wife to say that Spectrum had stopped by her house unexpectedly to turn off her cable and repair it.

 

[RichardKramer]

Back in the early 90's my in-laws wanted a tv in their bedroom. I bought a RS amp and my father in-law had some new twin lead, so I used the twin lead to run from the amp in the LR to the bedroom. Two days later my mother in-law calls me and says the cable co wanted to check the cable in the house. She told them I just ran some wiring to the upstairs bedroom and she would have me come over and meet them the next day. I should have known better than running the twin lead would lead to rfi; but the cable guys were nice; they replaced the twin lead run free of charge and no more issues.
My mother in-law told me she saw 2 guys walking around their house with portable antennas and was afraid to let them in the house until I came over.

 

[vsp5151]

Cable TV leakage refers to RF leaking out of the cable usually at loose connections or at a damaged spot in the cable. Apparently air communications is most affected by leakage. You can see that line of sight in the upward direction is very good. Search Air communications frequencies and you will see they use a wide range of frequencies. I haven't heard of interference to other users but I am sure there are some. Years ago I heard a few people say they could point their TV antenna toward the cable and they could occasionally view some TV from the cable tv leakage.

 

[gspivey]

About a month ago the local internet cable company had to replace the feed coming from the road to my house due to water in the cable. A few days after that the company contacted me and said they had detected “noise” coming from somewhere around my house and needed a technician to come by. He came and everything in the house checked out ok. He went to the road junction box and found that the previous tech had cut my old cable off rather than remove the connector, but had left about three inches of the coax connected. The copper in that piece of coax was acting like an antenna and creating the “noise.” He said they are trained to remove the copper center conductor from the cable if they have trouble removing the connector.

 

[hfd376]

Those antennas listen for qam modulation coming from the cable plant on 3 specific bands. The device tracks the truck's route by gps, and is used to prove to the FCC that the plant was ridden out. The FCC requires a plant rideout each quarter.

 

[hfd376]

Cable TV leakage refers to RF leaking out of the cable usually at loose connections or at a damaged spot in the cable. Apparently air communications is most affected by leakage. You can see that line of sight in the upward direction is very good. Search Air communications frequencies and you will see they use a wide range of frequencies. I haven't heard of interference to other users but I am sure there are some. Years ago I heard a few people say they could point their TV antenna toward the cable and they could occasionally view some TV from the cable tv leakage.

Not anymore, since some cable systems run as high as 1 GHz, there is also mutual interference to cell service as well.

 

[kc4jgc]

I haven't checked around since Cox HR switched to all digital; used to be that I could hear leakage on 2m. 1.25m and 70cm.
I used to create herringbone patterns on chs 17 & 18 (2m) as well as chs 23 & 24 (1.25m) and I could hear the hash from the cable system.

 

[nd5y]

I haven't checked around since Cox HR switched to all digital; used to be that I could hear leakage on 2m. 1.25m and 70cm.

The cable system here had carriers on 145.25, 439.25, 445.25 and a ton of others outside the amateur bands back when it was NTSC analog. When they switched to digital those disappeared. The leaks are probably still there but now they probably appears as wideband noise at a lower level.

 

[VFN05]

There was a Cox Communications truck parked in Fredericksburg the other day. I noticed there were several antennas on top, so I asked the driver what they were using for communications nowadays. He said those antennas are used to check for cable system "leakage." I didn't ask if they still use two-way radios.

Dave

Hi Dave,

To my knowledge, Cox does have a UHF DMR system that has a combination of local and wide area talkgroups. Last time I monitored it, they didn’t have a lot of activity on it. Several of the techs I spoke with said that they just use cell phones most of the time.

-Jason